Welcome to the Senger Lab Home Page

Vision of the Lab:

The Senger Lab innovates tools to
(i) design new metabolic pathways that produce valuable chemicals and
next-generation biofuels, (ii) engineer superior microbial hosts to produce
these chemicals from renewable resources such as sunlight and lignocellulose,
and (iii) determine the chemical compositions of cells, tissues, and organs in
real-time as they are exposed to changing environmental conditions and/or
genetic manipulations.

Our lab is focused on both computational
and experimental methods development, and all graduate students in our lab
learn to master toolsets of both approaches.
To derive new metabolic pathways, we use a novel computational approach that
includes combinatorial assembly, computer aided molecular design, molecular
dynamics, and docking simulations.
Metabolic engineering is then used to optimize pathway expression and microbial host fitness. We first derive
“fine-tuned” metabolic engineering strategies using genome-scale metabolic flux
modeling with a novel “flux ratios” approach.
Implementing these strategies in the lab calls for the application of
gene promoter libraries along with thermodynamically designed regulatory
RNA. Combinatorial metabolic engineering
methods (e.g., genomic libraries) are applied to explore biodiversity for
optimizing performance of engineered cultures.
We also research synthetic biological circuits to better enrich genomic
libraries for optimized performance.

Raman spectroscopy is used for real-time
monitoring of the chemical compositions of cultures and biological samples in
our lab. We have novel methods to
de-convolute complicated Raman spectra (which are composed of contributions
from thousands of chemicals in a biological sample). Peptide-guided surface enhanced Raman scattering
(pgSERS) is one novel tool invented in our lab to do this. Using pgSERS, a researcher can effectively
focus on any sub-cellular location (e.g., cell membrane or organelle)
selectively. These methods have shown
largely effective for monitoring phenotypes in real-time and
non-destructively. Several applications in
biotechnology and health related fields are being pursued with this technology.

Opportunities:

We are interested in recruiting quality graduate
students to specialize in metabolic engineering, systems biology, genome-scale
metabolic modeling, and/or synthetic biology. We are also interested in
hosting visiting scholars and postdoctoral researchers who can help us expand
our existing toolsets and knowledge. We also participate in Research for
Undergraduates (REU) programs and the Multicultural Academic Opportunities
Program (MAOP) at Virginia Tech and are always excited to train undergraduate
students to perform research. Please contact us with inquiries.